C.J. Cherryh's Blog, page 147

Lynn's blog is active again…

Link is over there on the left sidebar. Just keep scrolling down.

News about Thieves' World, travels, etc.

 

The hematology tests: 7 vials and see you in 10 days…

Takes a while to run some of these, but the hematologist was initially encouraging, dismissed spleen and liver issues as unlikely, and is running more tests, not all of which would be great news but some of which would be pretty good news if positive. So again, we don't know, but we're gaining on it.

 

Sometimes, the harder you paddle, the behinder you get…

In yesterday's mail—a large tax mixup with the state of Oklahoma, who thinks we still live there and have for the last 10 years. Near heart attack…which I didn't want to tell Jane about until I solved it. Which I have, or at least I've got someone on the problem. My accountant, who's IN Oklahoma,  says he can fix it: this happens all too often—apparently one of my old agencies or former publishers sent 1099′s to the wrong state. So now we've got the state of Oklahoma confused, and the collection agencies they hire to handle this frothing at the mouth, just what our nerves need, and now they've likely sold our name to OTHER agencies. We'll just have to ignore the vultures and wait for our accountant to explain to the state that taxes were paid long ago, and that we don't owe them anything.

Today—I go to get the extra pieces of the bridge deck because OSGuy has promised to bring the chop saw and cut it up for us, so we want to get it all cut. Wrong lumber. I got whiteboard Choice. I have to schlep it all back again. So I turn it in, and nearly kill the Lowe's guy when my bungee cord slipped my rather tired fingers—fortunately he was just out of range.

But the lumber I schlepped in evidently put pressure against our windshield–because when I had finally scraped together every fir Select lumber 1×4 of whatever size Lowe's had—and went back out to load the car, our windshield had a great big starshaped crack in it. I can't believe anyone hit it at Lowe's…I think it was just a ding that traveled. Update: closer examination reveals sawdust around the scene of the impact, and no old ding. We now think some idiot/coward in the adjacent parking place in the loading area for construction stuff dumped a piece of lumber, broke our windshield, and scampered. Nice.

 

 

Jane felt better today: and we got something pretty done….

She's got the slideshow on her blog: link on our left sidebar, to The Captain and Lime.

Jane's doing much better…

She's up, swearing at her stacked-up mail, the tax report, the credit card account (somebody charged about a hundred dollars on one of our cards just after us at a service station), the balky printer, the location of her pill bottle, life, the universe, and the stack of to-do's that's gotten out of whack while she's been down…it's good to hear!

 

So…she's good. Life is good. When a day starts with a call to Poison Control…

..it's all up hill from there, eh?

I've been a little distracted, shall we say?

I drank a cup of bleach solution (been cleaning the water filter) at dawn this morning. Called Poison Control. All ok. People do worse.

I ran a school zone. Got stopped on the way back from the doctor's.

Got so disoriented I couldn't find the pancake place without Jane's navigation. I'd have been in Idaho.

But it's a good day. The cats are snarling at each other. Jane had her second round of tests this morning: Jane's insides are certified to be in very good shape, and now we're down to the hemotologist.

 

We didn't get the bridge up, but we put two 12′ 2x4s across…

…which will greatly (we hope) inhibit the eagle's strike run. Of course we keep getting hit by the scarecrow water jet, and poor OSG who came out to admire the fishes—got it full force. It is pretty startling to get soaked in cold water.

It's not just building the bridge: we've got to level the footing, which means getting some gravel or sand under the edge until it's level, and Jane wants to do this. She's operating on about half her normal red blood cells right now, which doesn't make this practical, but we're hoping to get a handle on what's going on and get that fixed.

We're doing much better this evening.

WE went and got ice cream.

 

Officially declaring moratorium on boxes of books mailed to our home…

I just returned a batch, which were packed too heavy: Jane isn't supposed to be lifting things, I can't carry them the route to the post office, and we were greatly distraught  and exhausted by the time we got them there and got them delivered to the counter.

No more boxes at all for the remainder of this year. I will happily sign bookplates @ 2$ each for shipping and handling, but not 30 lb boxes of books, please.

And after this I am firmly insisting that no box be more than 10 lbs.

The eagle came back…

…but left without fishies. We got two more very tiny koi we hope will make it fine. And we got some measly plants that we hope will multiply fast. Temperatures are getting into the 70′s for the first time, and our pond now has two rings, the 6′ shade ring and a 3′ plant ring, which is why the eagle left frustrated, I think.

Jane is feeling about as well as you can feel with a blood count of 24 out of 40. But on this one day between the last test and the prep for the other test, we're going to pre-assemble the bridge, drilling the holes, etc. Then we will disassemble it, and once the pond edge is leveled, we will and lug it piecemeal out to the pond to reassemble, because the thing weighs more than we can carry. We will deck it and crawl out on the decking as we build it, until we can reach middle and install the center brace, then just keep going toward the other end. This is the sort of thing you do if you are not two 300 pound guys who could build this thing in the garage and carry it into position. Fin-esse, eh?

I have not been able to work at all since Jane fell ill—I've just been too done in, and I haven't trusted my creative sense to do anything useful. So this is us getting a little bit active, and should be fun. We have clamps, we have a good drill, and we have carpentry skillz. So we're looking forward to this.

 

 

So far so good…

Jane's upper GI procedure turned up some small ulcers, nothing major. She's in for the lower GI Friday. Stay tuned. Our crappy insurance is being crappy. More on that later.